Greys & Things

I ended up purchasing my own flowers for prom night.  I’m not sure why I did that, but I did.  I wore the same dress that I wore at my 8th grade graduation.  My Mom said it was a perfectly good dress, so I didn’t really have a choice.  I never did have the fun of shopping for a prom dress because the next year I wore the dress from my brother’s wedding.

I got dressed at my friend’s house and we waited for our dates.  The plans had even changed that day and now we were not even going to St. Louis for dinner.  We were going with 8 couples to dinner at a place in our home town.  The restaurant they chose was probably the fanciest one in our town.  I had never been there before.

Jeff arrived with Lee and then we all left for the restaurant.  While we were eating at this very classy restaurant, we heard a knocking on the windows.  We looked up and saw Jeff’s brother, sister and friend waving at us.  They did this for what seemed like quite a while.  It was embarrassing.  I later found out that the friend was someone that wanted to date Jeff.  I knew her from school. She later showed up for our wedding and came in late and walked down the aisle right before me.  I also found out that Jeff’s Mom did not know that his sister and brother showed up at our dinner until he told her about it.  They were supposed to be just getting ice cream, but decided to make a detour by the restaurant.  It’s funny now, but it was embarrassing when it happened.

After dinner, we went to prom.  I found out that Jeff had not paid his class dues, so he could not attend.  He sat in the car while I went into prom with Lee and Karen.  I don’t remember how long we stayed at prom, but I don’t think it was that long.  I was shocked when we arrived back at the car and Jeff was reading the Bible and listening to a preacher on the radio.  This did not go over well with me as I am Catholic and was not used to hearing a preacher yelling through the radio speakers.  Jeff was a Baptist at that time.  

We then went to an all night truck stop for breakfast although I don’t think it was that late really.  Jeff took me back to my friend’s house.  I thought he was leaning in to kiss me good night when she turned on the outside light and opened the door and yelled “HI”.  He then left.  I told my friend that I really didn’t care if I ever saw him again.  We dated a few times during that summer, but nothing really came of it.  After we both went away to college, we started dating again and that’s when things took off.  We married in 1986.